Man, there is a lot of chatter about Mike Vick these days. I used to think he wasn’t quite as big a punk as his brother, but apparently family ties run deep. The talking heads all seem to expect a 1-year sentence at minimum, but I’m not so sure. Yeah, the Feds could give Vick all that jail time and make an example of him, but to me that seems like squandering their advantage. The sports guys have it right when they say that Vick’s career can’t really take even a year off — he’s an athletic freak, not a football mind, and without the constant exposure to field conditions his already-deficient technique could take an irreparable hit. If he spends a year in jail, that means he’ll miss at least two seasons, and if that happens he may have no choice other than to come back as a running back. So basically the Feds have him over a barrel. If they hit him with even a fairly light sentence, his career might well be over.

But all that gets the Feds is Bad Newz Kennels. Wouldn’t it make more sense to slap his wrist in exchange for having him roll over on all those guys his dogs fought against? There was a lot of talk early on in the investigation about how Mike Vick was a major player in the dogfighting world. The Feds can use that knowledge — after all, the world of dogfighting has been notoriously difficult to breach — and I think they might dangle a big fat carrot in front of Vick to get it. I think that maybe his plea deal will involve a 6-month sentence at Club Fed, with another 3-month commitment in front of a grand jury. Now if only somebody would throw Pacman Jones in jail…